any mac geek/photographers here?

If you touch your software enough does it become hardware?

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halus
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any mac geek/photographers here?

Post by halus »

my job is now requiring me to choose some photograph mutilation software.
since i work (mostly) with RAW images, someone has suggested that i try "aperture".
has anyone here used aperture and if so have you anything good/bad that you can tell me about it?
please? :aww:
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Re: any mac geek/photographers here?

Post by eion »

halus wrote:my job is now requiring me to choose some photograph mutilation software.
since i work (mostly) with RAW images, someone has suggested that i try "aperture".
has anyone here used aperture and if so have you anything good/bad that you can tell me about it?
please? :aww:
If you want to actually edit photos, why not Photoshop? That speaks RAW just fine.
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Post by Joose »

I know little about such things, but my brother in law is a proffesional photographer and long standing mac-geek, so I'll seek out his opinion for you :)
halus
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Post by halus »

eion:
i currently use photoshop at work but there are apparently some things that this program will do that photoshop doesn't.
then again, i don't know if it is simply because our IT guy is in love with macs and mac accessories.
he told my boss i have to have a 24" imac to do my job correctly.
Joose wrote:I know little about such things, but my brother in law is a proffesional photographer and long standing mac-geek, so I'll seek out his opinion for you :)
thanks, joose! :pie:
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Post by Grimmie »

Potatoshop all the way.
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Post by eion »

halus wrote:eion:
i currently use photoshop at work but there are apparently some things that this program will do that photoshop doesn't.
Honestly, I doubt it. I dunno, all Apple software I've ever used has been totally and utterly fail, so I tend to avoid it like bad AIDS, and Photoshop is truly awesome. Aperture may be better at simple bulk editing tasks (although honestly I wouldn't bet on it, and the reviews I read of Aperture were mixed at best), but I believe that's what Adobe Lightroom is for.

Also, if you know how to use Photoshop already (or at least have a passing familiarity with it), then there'll be less of a learning curve, one would have thought.
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Post by friznit »

halus wrote:eion:
i currently use photoshop at work but there are apparently some things that this program will do that photoshop doesn't.
then again, i don't know if it is simply because our IT guy is in love with macs and mac accessories.
he told my boss i have to have a 24" imac to do my job correctly.


thanks, joose! :pie:
Did he mean computers or legwax?

/me runs
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Post by Joose »

eion wrote: Honestly, I doubt it. I dunno, all Apple software I've ever used has been totally and utterly fail, so I tend to avoid it like bad AIDS, and Photoshop is truly awesome.
I seem to remember somewhere reading that tattyshops RAW support was cock, but I also seem to remember reading that it was fixed in the more recent tattyshops.

As for the Apple software statement: I would agree in most cases. The only one I would dispute this on is video editing. Having used a variety of both mac and PC suites, ranging from uber cheap to re-mortgage-your-house expensive (on both), I can honestly say that I would go for the mac option over the equally priced PC option every time. Video editing on PC's is like doing a fat lass: only if I have no choice in the matter, rather unpleasant, and makes me feel dirty and wrong for days afterwards.

Although Ive not had any personal experience with image editing on the mac, I have heard many people say similar things to my video editing views.
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Post by Dog Pants »

Joose wrote:Although Ive not had any personal experience with image editing on the mac, I have heard many people say similar things to my video editing views.
And plenty of experience of fat lasses :)
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Post by MrGreen »

Joose wrote: As for the Apple software statement: I would agree in most cases. The only one I would dispute this on is video editing. Having used a variety of both mac and PC suites, ranging from uber cheap to re-mortgage-your-house expensive (on both), I can honestly say that I would go for the mac option over the equally priced PC option every time. Video editing on PC's is like doing a fat lass: only if I have no choice in the matter, rather unpleasant, and makes me feel dirty and wrong for days afterwards.
I certainly agree with this, I use macs and PCs equally, but Macs have the edge for video editing by a large margin, however, image editing is down to preference, RAW is not so great on OSX Photoshop, but since Apature is pretty much made for use with RAW, its much better for that job, the downside is that the flexibility is far worse than good ole' photoshop.
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Post by eion »

From what I've seen with images from my friend's D30, RAW support in CS2 wasn't bad to be honest. I assume CS3's is better, but I've not had any RAW images to play with. I wish my camera could do RAW - as well as having a less noisy sensor and giving me a bit more (well, some would be nice) control over exposure et cetera.
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Post by MrGreen »

eion wrote:From what I've seen with images from my friend's D30, RAW support in CS2 wasn't bad to be honest. I assume CS3's is better, but I've not had any RAW images to play with. I wish my camera could do RAW - as well as having a less noisy sensor and giving me a bit more (well, some would be nice) control over exposure et cetera.
The support is ok but it is, however, oh so very slow (at least compared to apature on a similar (if not the same) machine).

*EDIT. I should also add that as a (amateur/ crap) photographer I don't use RAW, its pretty much not worth it.
Last edited by MrGreen on June 26th, 2007, 17:41, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by cooked salmon »

I pirated Aperture one afternoon for shits and giggles, tried it out, and I didn't like it as much as Photoshop's RAW editing.

Aperture's interface is kind of weird to me after using Photoshop for so long. It's also difficult to import photos if you don't use iPhoto, it seems.

After trying out Aperture briefly, I feel like Photoshop offers a lot more adjustment control, a wider range of editing opportunities, and might put out more professional looking images. Also, if you're going to be printing the photos, I'd go with Photoshop again.

I guess if you're still trying it to figure out which one you like better, you can always download a free 30-day-trial version from Apple's homepage. :3
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Post by eion »

MrGreen wrote:
The support is ok it is, however, oh so very slow (at least compared to apature on a similar (if not the same) machine).
On CS2 or CS3? I seem to recall that CS2 ran relatively poorly on Intel Macs due to it not being native code.
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Post by MrGreen »

eion wrote:
On CS2 or CS3? I seem to recall that CS2 ran relatively poorly on Intel Macs due to it not being native code.
CS1 on a PPC Powermac G5 and CS3 on a 1.86Ghz Intel iMac, 1.86ghz MacBook Pro, 2.1Ghz MacBook (all of which with a gig of ram), photoshop RAW editing isn't great on any of them.
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Post by eion »

I dunno, I guess it's subjective. Last time I dealt with RAWs it didn't feel particularly sluggish with CS2 on my XP machine (3GHz P4, 1GB of RAM, RAID0 Raptors).

CS3 is all of the win anyway - I love Smart Filters (although I wish some of my plugins would work as Smart Filters too).

Also, I recently discovered Curvemeister. This plugin absolutely flat-out rocks. Only downside is that to do an adjustment layer, you have to export the curve from the plugin and then import it into the adjustment layer, but still - the thing is totally aces.
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Post by halus »

friznit wrote:Did he mean computers or legwax?
/me runs
he? sounds like i need to use immac more than an imac right now. :P

thanks for your opinions, everyone. tis appreciated.
i'm going to have to see exactly what it is that they want from me that i can't do with potatoshop and then probably be forced into trying out the 30 day trial of aperture anyway just to placate the I.T. guy.
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Post by pixie pie »

Potatoshop CS2 isn't native for the new intelmacs. I'm not sure about CS3, it wouldn't make sense to release a new version and NOT make it "Universal" so I assume that one will be all well and good.

I've got Macromedia suite 8 on my intelmac; and.. alas it isn't native, and thus runs like a bitch when you try and have more than one of them open. eg. you're doing something in Flash, aswell as Fireworks.. God forbid trying to use Dreamweaver too; the thing would probably fall over.
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